1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an address list management apparatus, an address list management method, and a storage medium, and in particular to technology for preventing the leakage of secret information during image communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, image formation apparatuses such as MFPs (Multi Function Peripherals) have widely been connected to a communication network and have been able to exchange image data, etc. Depending on the use environment of the image formation apparatus, such as an office, there are often cases in which two or more users share an image formation apparatus.
When address information for image data is registered in an image formation apparatus shared by two or more users, the address information must be managed separately for each user since it is necessary to maintain the confidentiality of the addresses, which are private to each individual.
Also, technology for managing address books user-by-user in an address book server has been proposed since there are often cases in which two or more image formation apparatuses are connected to a communication network in an office environment. This enables the same address book to be referenced from any of the image formation apparatuses on the communication network, which improves user-convenience when transmitting image data.
However, when for example transmitting image data from an image formation apparatus to an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server, the image formation apparatus must acquire the address information of the FTP server from the address book server. This address information of course also includes the login information for the FTP server.
For this reason, each time the image formation apparatus transmits image data to the FTP server, the login information for the FTP server is transmitted from the address book server to the image formation apparatus. If someone were snooping the network during this time, the login information could be leaked, which would lead to the leakage of secret information stored on the FTP server.
The leakage of login information can be prevented by causing all of the image formation apparatuses to transfer image data to the address book server, but this increases the load borne by the address book server, and risks hindering smooth communication.
This problem arises not only with FTP, but also in all communication methods that require some sort of secret information when transferring image data.